Movies Seen Recently: Gentlemen Broncos, Samaritan, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Gentlemen Broncos (2009) – From the mind behind Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre comes a movie guaranteed from the beginning not to be nearly as popular as either of those two, because it’s aimed at a very small target demographic — namely, me.  The protagonist is a home-schooled teen with a yen to be a science fiction novelist; his antagonist is the bizarrely successful science fiction novelist (I say “bizarrely” because his wacky concepts — with self-painted cover art! — would never be touched by a major publisher, let alone promoted) who, desperate for a hit, steals the youngster’s manuscript and changes a few names.

Adding pizzazz are filmed sequences from both the youngster’s and the novelist’s versions of the novel, both equally ludicrous and jaw-dropping.  Plus there are the meandering side quests for which direct Jared Hess is known, including the youngster’s mom’s attempts to design clothing (Jennifer Coolidge is about the only recognizable non-Hess alumnus in the cast), as well as the local director with delusions of adequacy who makes a camcorder epic of the original version of the novel (Hector Jimenez, co-star of Nacho Libre).

An added treat for me was the Salt Lake City shooting locations, including Utah Book & Magazine (“Hey, I’ve browsed comic back issues there!”) and the climactic scene in Sam Weller’s Books, at the time the center of the known universe.

Samaritan (2022) – This movie turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I want my burgers to taste like burgers, and my pizza to taste like pizza.  This story of a young kid who becomes convinced that his garbage-man neighbor (Sylvester Stallone) is actually Samaritan, the superhero who disappeared decades ago after a battle with his twin brother nemesis (helpfully named Nemesis) is exactly the kind of discussion on heroism, obligation, duty, disillusionment, etc. that it seemed to be in the trailer.

That said, I’d probably feel cheated if, instead of as an Amazon Original, I had seen this in the theater, as it’s maybe just a little too predictable.  In fact, I had figured out the climactic “twist” by the end of the opening credits.  On top of that, you have no less than three plot points turning on what people see through windows that by rights should be curtained, plus a final battle taking place on the upper story of a warehouse on fire, and yet no one even coughs or acts as if smoke inhalation were a thing.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – Reading Robert Englund’s memoir Hollywood Monster put me in mind to revisit the Elm Street movies, most of which I haven’t watched in 30 years, and which I’ve never seen in order.

Of course,  it’s hard to watch the first one and ignore the wisecracking pop-cultural icon that Freddy Krueger became.  It’s telling that later installments toned down the extremely horrific nature of the crimes for which Freddy was immolated, as he became the main draw of the movies. But I guess that should have been foreseeable, even without the sequels extending a movie to a franchise; once the boogeyman is seen and named, he loses about 90% of his scariness.